Since 2014, I’ve been serving as the President of the a very different alumni association – of Atlantic Union College (AUC), in Lancaster, MA – and sitting on the AUC Board of Trustees, which has actually given me a window on the diversity crisis at Yale. In 1998 I earned my MEd at AUC, having become a dedicated Christian (Seventh-Day Adventist) in 1975. (Incidentally, the now famous Ben Carson ’73 is also an Adventist, and is close to AUC). AUC sits in contrast to our dear old Eli. It is a very small, struggling college that just reopened this last August after a 4 year bachelors degree shut down (not so uncommon these days – think Antioch & Sweetbriar). AUC also has for some time been flirting with status as a historically black college. This is the fact that makes it relevant to Yale’s recent racial travails. Since 1970, it’s enrollment has hovered in the range of 75% students of color.

But it is not only through this ‘non token’ diversity AUC, that I personally identify with the inflamed feeling of black marginalization. I could never, ever be categorized as a person of color (I’m almost as WASPish as old Elihu himself), but my nuclear family is black as the USA generally accounts ‘blackness’. In 1977, I married Hazel Shaw of Kingston Jamaica (as reported in Alumni Notes long ago). I like to to tell people I’m half black – my “better half”. That said, the four of us (including son Nathan and daughter Naomi) have been very happy and have personally avoided most racial angst.